Yarns Without Threads 

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Unfulfilled Promise

The following books might be expected to have at least some naturist or naturism-related content. They don't. Well, I know some of them don't - the rest probably don't. Where I am sure there is no naturist nudity, the entry is in bold.

1. Books with "Naked", "Nude" or similar in the title

Ted Mark book cover book cover
The Nude Who NeverThe Nude Wore Black
19651967

There's oodles of nudity in the first of these late-sixties tales, in which a small-town girl tries to make it in the nearest big town. But no naturism. The opening scene is almost word-for-word a duplicate of an early scene in another book I've read in the last couple of years, but I just cannot track down this example of blatant literary plagiarism!

The sequel has less nudity but no less sex. At times, Ted Mark seems to be trying to emulate the witty banter produced by Thorne Smith and many others, but he's not in the same class, and his attempts at social commentary generally fall flat.

Francine Pascal book coverbook cover
Naked - Book 16 of the Fearless series
2002 August

Aimed at teenagers, this thriller series has as its heroine Gaia Moore. There's a very brief scene of non-sexual nudity in this book. Unfortunately, despite one character pointing out that it's no big deal, another is in total shock as a result - I got the impression that the author's sympathies were with the latter.

Elizabeth Peters book cover
Naked Once More
1989

Despite the title, and the (rather nice) cover, there is no nudity of any sort in this amateur detective novel. As the heroine asserts on p47: "there's a cynical old saying in publising that the word 'naked' in a book title will sell an additional fifty thousand copies". (This is probably derived from "If you want big sales, you need bosoms and bottoms on the covers" - Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books.) From the book's copyright information, I believe that "Elizabeth Peters" is the pen name of Barbara Mertz

If it wasn't for the (justifiable) inclusion of Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves in the main lists, I would have listed his The Naked Sun here - even though it includes social nudity which is almost non-sexual. Instead you'll find comments on the latter included with those about the former.

Some of the above may contain naturist nudity, but in the majority of cases I know they don't. Corrections are always welcome. The list was compiled primarily by using the search facility of LocusMag.

2. Unfilfilled Expectations

Books in this category have plots or subplots which might be expected to involve naturism or naturist nudity, explicitly or implicitly. Instead, there is only sexual nudity.

Years ago, I read Oliver Anderson's Random Mating which the blurb alleged was "hilarious" (or some such equivalent). This feeble attempt at humour was published in 1960 and starred one Guy Random (geddit?), a handsome and multi-talented man-about-town who was always fighting off the attentions of a bevy of luscious young maidens (you can see why this is such a clear candidate for humour, can't you?) Staying at a friend's house in a small village, Mr Random meets all manner of characters, and has many enjoyable escapades. One running sub-plot concerns the village males' hobby of "gandering". It turns out that this involves nothing more than spying on the naked sunbathing of a temporary inhabitant, a gorgeous blonde from Scandinavia. As so often with books where the author tries too hard to be funny, I didn't laugh once, and managed no more than a couple of half-smiles for the whole ludicrous tale. Fortunately for the reading public, this book seems to have vanished, to the extent that I've been unable to track down any details of author or publisher. Since the naturist exists only to provide an object for the ogling and peeping of others, and the book said absolutely nothing about naturism, it doesn't mention even a passing reference in the main tables.

book cover Attention All Shipping, by Charlie Connelly. Despite the blurb's assertion that Connelly "encounters ... German nudists" as he visits a coastal location for each of the areas of the BBC Shipping Forecast, he doesn't come across any nudity. He does visit Sylt (not his intended destination for sea area German Bight - despite being a travel writer he seems to have a knack of lousy travel planning which upsets several of the trips in this book), which he discovers: "Sylt is one of Germany's most popular destinations for naturists, hence you can often see the wobbly flesh panniers of ageing Germans darting between some of the most expensive cars in the world." That's it, folks. Misleading blurb syndrome strikes again. I found the book reasonably interesting, if less than brilliantly written - I'm still puzzling over the bizarre phrase "sheer whiteness reflected by the sun".

book cover The Naughty Diary of an Edwardian Lady, by "Ethel Hordle", is a spoof of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. This is allegedly "a facsimile reproduction of a naturist's diary for the year 1906". Vulgar, sometimes amusing. No social nudity at all, not even as a pretext for sexual goings-on or innuendo. An opportunity for numerous jokes confusing 'naturist' with 'naturalist' has been passed by. Does anyone care?

book coverThe blurb on the back of Susan Howatch's The Devil on Lammas Night, begins: "When Tristan Poole moved into Colwyn Court, in a remote Welsh seaside village, was it to form a nudist group?" On page 20, we read "Colwyn Village was intrigued by Mr Poole and his society [for the Propogation of Nature Foods]. One rumour, inspired by the word 'nature' in the society's title, hinted darkly that Colwyn Court was about to be turned into a nudist colony." The locals need not have worried. Charming Mr Poole is merely heading a coven, and the only nudity in the book takes place during a Satanic rite: "The congregation forsook their enrapt immobility and began to strip off their clothes. ... Jane, who was not prudish but thought that human beings usually looked better with clothes than without them, found herself rivted to the spot with an appalled fascination. But even before she could ask herself incredulously how the elderly, the obese and the ugly could reveal themselves in such a way without a qualm, her attention was caught by Poole ..." With this attitude to nudity, it's probably as well Miss Howatch didn't allow her daring use of "nudist" in the book to expand into anything more substantial.

book cover book cover After Midnight, by Richard Laymon, is an out-and-out horror tale. The blurb says "When Alice's friend Serena goes away she stays in her house, with its sunken bathtub and big-screen TV. Best of all is the outdoor swimming pool. But one night a stranger walks out of the woods and jumps naked into the pool." This is by far from the end of the nudity in this book. However, the nudity is always sexual, except where it is for the purpose of washing various nasty materials off the body, or for preventing a character's clothing being soiled by said materials. The sex is often violent, the violence often sexual. Clearly a popular author, but not one I enjoyed.

book coverIf you use on-line bookseller Amazon, and either buy a book with extensive naturist content or search for "naturism" or "nudism", you will probably be recommended High Wall of Spring, by Julian Stamper (Fithian Press, 2001). While there is some nudity in this book, none of the many forms seem to me to be naturist nudity. Not being particularly experienced or educated in reading high-art literature, I have almost certainly missed much of the book's message. I was not helped by the author's use of several distinct styles and voices, nor by the (deliberately?) erratic (fluid?) sense of time. Various characters get naked fairly often. This is usually for sexual reasons, but sometimes for swimming or sunning - although even there I encountered overtones of exhibitionism, voyeurism, flaunting and contrariness which stopped the clotheslessness being enjoyed for and of itself, or occuring simply because it was the most natural or comfortable thing to do.

From the tone of the comments above, some might say that I should not have included Guy Bellamy's The Nudists in the main section. While that is certainly a reasonable point of view, the explicitly naturist title, coupled with at least some character's non-sexual social nudity, encouraged me to keep it in. Furthermore, it was one of the first pages I produced, and I didn't want to feel the effort had been wasted.

Suggestions for additional material to be included in any section of Yarns Without Threads are most welcome, as are your own views and reviews. Please email these to me.

Last updated 2006 April 22.
 
Illustrations copyright various publishers and illustrators. Text copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Tim Forcer

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